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jwar wrote:The laser beam does get hot enough and it works fan-fucking-tastic with steel. No doubt about it. However, when annealing steel, which would be close to the same settings as cutting, it causes the opposite side of the steel to oxidize. I'm assuming it's some sort of chemical reaction to the beam, but I've never figured out exactly why. Instant rust and bad, bad, bad.

Oh, hey jwar, I promise I'm not stealing your lines. I just, borrowed it for one second.. see, no scratches or nothing..

While on the surface instant rust sounds like my bag, I agree that it has no place in cutting. Were you introducing any gas?

Realistically, labeling controls through rust would get more of a workout than actual cutting.. at least until I fall in love with square holes. Sort of brings my interest in line with the original Eleksmaker A5 post.

No gases introduced. Just oxygen after the lasering process.

So what I'm assuming is occurring is that while the laser is creating exothermic conditions (which would be annealing or cutting), the steel gets super heated to the point of causing a reaction when introduced to oxygen. So perhaps, and this is just a theory, the rust like conditions only occur when the steel cools too fast or is introduced to oxygen. With the machine I had, it was air tight, so that would explain the rapid interaction.

Again, I'm just guessing here based on my knowledge base.

"My boner"

-Jwar

"You may caress my harem of large velvety hammers any time".

- The Velvet Hammer

"#I'mwithJwar"

-D.O.S.

"Also this thread is now on page 2399, and the pt2399 is the most used delay chip for most dirty delays. Coincidence? therefore 9/11".

Madbean said to me the other day: "Hey, I wonder if plastic knobs can be etched?" So I had to try it. It works, but you really need a larger, flatter knob for it to be useable for anything beyond just a single letter.

The main problem is that while it looks cool when finished, the "black" in the letters is basically plastic soot, so it smudges when you touch it and will eventually wear out/off. So on suggestion of some other DIY guys, I cleaned out the soot and inked the letters with black acrylic paint. Worked very well and was easy to apply and clean up. I'm going to do another wipe down to get last bits of acrylic off the top, but it looks good as is until you really look at it close (ie - while using a pedal, you'd never bend down and put your eyeball right on top of the knobs).

You can measure the tubes output with a tool, but I don't have one. It will tell you if you're getting as much wattages as it claims. I can't imagine they'd lie about that, but who knows. Looks cool either way!

"My boner"

-Jwar

"You may caress my harem of large velvety hammers any time".

- The Velvet Hammer

"#I'mwithJwar"

-D.O.S.

"Also this thread is now on page 2399, and the pt2399 is the most used delay chip for most dirty delays. Coincidence? therefore 9/11".

Jesus Was a Robot wrote: I can't imagine they'd lie about that, but who knows. Looks cool either way!

The less expensive Chinese CO2 machines are notorious for exaggerating wattage. A lot of the 40W tubes have been measured between 25W - 30W. But considering that the whole machine is only about $500, I wouldn't be too upset by it.

Yes, that's basically how i feel. I definitely take any spec with a grain of salt and just remind myself i went with the cheapest solution so you do actually get what you pay for often with that approach.

im not sure if this is what they would use, but you can get "coherent" laser diode arrays in a bar formation easily 50W plus, then you just need the optics to focus the bar into a beam. if you youtube laser cutting bar or something like that you will find this sort of thing. the price is comparable to Co2 at that power it looks like.? (well for aftermarket no name stuff anywys) Might be interesting. certainly is much smaller.

I don't know why they swapped it originally, maybe for an experiment? Way before I was there.. but we work mostly with solid state lasers in general in our drilling/machining systems. I'm not an optics guy but from what I understand they are less maintenance/more reliable on an industrial level.

imJonWain wrote:I don't know why they swapped it originally, maybe for an experiment? Way before I was there.. but we work mostly with solid state lasers in general in our drilling/machining systems. I'm not an optics guy but from what I understand they are less maintenance/more reliable on an industrial level.

here i finally used mine for something, some plexiglass adaptor boards to put some pcbs onto DIN mount rails in a new control box for one of my cncs. not that exciting but it cuts the acrylic (3mm) at less than 40% power ~15cm/second feed so that is nice. ~ 1min per plate to cut.